Frank beats upstart challenger Bielat to win 16th House term

Wednesday

Nov 3, 2010 at 12:01 AMNov 3, 2010 at 3:16 AM

Despite a national wave against incumbent lawmakers, U.S. Rep. Barney Frank managed to stave off the toughest challenge to his office on Tuesday, winning re-election to a 16th term in the House of Representatives with an 11-point margin.

John Hilliard and Steve Annear, Wicked Local

Despite a national wave against incumbent lawmakers, U.S. Rep. Barney Frank managed to stave off the toughest challenge to his office on Tuesday, winning re-election to a 16th term in the House of Representatives with an 11-point margin.

Frank’s challenger, Sean Bielat, 35, was a first-time candidate for public office, who managed to spearhead a national fundraising effort and won the endorsement of some high-profile conservatives, including Sen. Scott Brown, Sen. John McCain of Arizona, former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney.

Frank addressed his crowd of supporters, thanked his family and took the first opportunity to go after his critics, who banded together across the country to defeat him.

“I go back determined to protect the financial reform bill we put through,” he said. “There is another issue here, and that was the deteriorated nature of this campaign, and, at least in Massachusetts, we have repudiated unreasoning anger, anonymous smears…and that has to be said. The collective campaigns that were run by Republicans were beneath the dignity of a democracy.”

Frank, the longtime Democrat, finds himself in a minority: Although not a single Republican won in Massachusetts congressional or statewide races Tuesday, GOP gains nationwide gave the party control of the House, although Democrats retain a majority in the Senate.

Frank acknowledged the difficult times ahead for House Democrats, and said he and his partner, Jim Ready, thanked supporters for their efforts.

“Jim and I are deeply appreciative of what you did for us to make our life together possible with my serving in Congress,” Frank said. “I go back to Washington in two weeks in the lame duck session, and compared to what it will be next year, lame duck is probably going to look good.”

Bielat mounted a national fundraising drive, and out-of-state groups ran ads targeting Frank that were not part of the Bielat campaign. Frank also criticized the role of outside groups in the race.

“[Bielat] complained that I outspent him. I did outspend him,” said Frank. “But I did not outspend the combination of him, the Tea Party, The Western Express, and the anonymous right-wing groups empowered by the Supreme Court. We now have this threat the Supreme Court has unleashed, so anonymous threats of smear-tactic money can win.”

Frank also took issue with the Boston Herald, which endorsed Bielat.

“Let me say that people will advise me to be more judicious, but with the election of all 10 Democratic congressmen, and Governor Patrick, one of the things we can acknowledge tonight is that [Massachusetts] has reaffirmed the complete political irrelevance of the Boston Herald,” said Frank. “There was no limit to the bias and vitriol they unleashed, and it had no impact, so good for Massachusetts. The influence of Fox News does not in the end seem to have been very great either.”

Frank, first elected to represent the House’s 4th District in 1980, never faced serious opposition to reelection until Bielat launched his campaign earlier this year.

Bielat gave his concession speech to cheers of “Thank you, Sean!” and “Go Sean, go!,” Bielat applauded his supporters at the Newton Marriot Hotel ballroom. At his side, his wife, Hope, held their baby son, Theo, while family members stood behind Bielat.

“This has been a huge success. If you look at what we’ve done here, we have created in the 4th District a choice, for the first time in 30 years people went to the polls, and they had a choice,“ said Bielat, who was interrupted more than once by cheers despite the loss.

He thanked several supporters by name, and said that thanks to his campaign, an infrastructure is now in place to support future GOP candidates for statewide office.

Bielat dispensed with the tradition of congratulating his opponent before giving his speech, nor did he offer any praise for his Democratic rival in his speech.

In an interview following the speech, Bielat said he was holding off on calling Frank until the final voting tallies were in. (During the speech, the race was pegged at 65 percent in favor of Frank, and 35 percent for Bielat. It narrowed to about 54 percent for Frank and 43 percent for Bielat.)

“I haven’t called him yet, no. I will call him, I just want to see what the actual results are first,” said Bielat.

(At Frank’s party, a reporter asked Frank if he had spoken to Bielat following the race outcome. “If he hasn’t called me to congratulate me, why else would he call me? To wish me a happy birthday?” responded Frank.)

When asked if he saw himself a leader of the state GOP, Bielat said he was unsure.

“I don’t know. I’m a guy who ran for this district,” said Bielat, just as a supporter leaned over a crush of news reporters and TV cameras to offer him a fist bump, which Bielat returned.

In that interview, Bielat said he didn’t know if he’d run again for public office, pointing to the process he’d just completed.

“This is a sacrifice to do this. I haven’t been working for a year, so there’s the income hit, there’s a lot of time away from the family — as you can see, we have a little boy — [and] I haven’t been around the hours that I’d like to be,” said Bielat.

Bielat said his campaign forced Frank to be more open, and the competition will result in better governing.

“We saw him be more conciliatory, we saw him being more open to constituents, we saw him talking a little more about his record, and some things he may not have done well in the past,” Bielat said. “All those things are good. Competition is good. We get better governance, we get better policy, we get better outcomes when there are competitive races.”

Frank is widely seen as one of the intellectual giants of the House of Representatives, after having been first elected to represent the House’s 4th district in 1980 at the age of 40. In 1987, Frank announced that he was gay — among the first federal lawmakers to do so — and spent the rest of his career championing the rights of gays, lesbians, bisexual and transgendered people.

A staunch liberal, he long supported abortion rights, and most recently, proposed a cut in overseas military spending to free up resources for domestic spending.

But Frank, who was elected chairman of the House Financial Services Committee in 2007, was caught in the middle of a government bailout of Wall Street, a federal takeover of General Motors, and the collapse of the nation’s housing market.

Frank was pounded by critics for his support of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae in the years leading up to the housing crisis, and while the push to put more Americans into homeownership was championed by presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, Frank was accused by many for shouldering much of the blame for the collapse.

Frank ended up tapping $200,000 of his own money to finance his campaign, and called in the aid of former President Clinton to help campaign for Frank in the days leading up to the election.

Bielat, a major in the Marine Corps reserves who left his job at iRobot to campaign, based his platform on voter anger at a perception that Washington lawmakers have lost touch with the concerns of their constituents; even his website used the domain name retirebarney.org.